The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

On 22 June 1980, Pope John Paul II beatified Kateri Tekakwitha, an Amerindian woman who had lived in the middle part of the seventeenth century. Most of our knowledge of Kateri comes from a series of pious biographies compiled by members of the Jesuit Order, the same order that claims responsibility for her conversion to Christianity. The earliest dates to 1680, the year of Kateri's death. This paper explores the process by which these early missionaries created Kateri Tekakwitha. It suggests that her life story is paradigmatic of one European response to the problem of the New World and its inhabitants.